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RADICAN'S DVD REVIEW SERIES: "The Kevin Steen Show with Chris Hero" - WWE departure, thoughts on WWE Performance Center, great CZW & IWA-MS stories

Feb 8, 2014 - 4:43:27 PM
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RADICAN’S DVD REVIEW SERIES
“THE KEVIN STEEN SHOW WITH CHRIS HERO”
BY SEAN RADICAN, TORCH COLUMNIST
steen_show_hero.jpg


Fresh off his WWE release, Chris Hero aka Kassius Ohno in WWE sat down with Kevin Steen for a two hour conversation about a wide variety of topics. Steen was apparently a busy man on the evening this was filmed, as he mentions it was his fourth interview, but that didn’t affect the quality of this interview.

The great thing about The Kevin Steen Show is that there really is no format and Steen takes the conversation wherever he and his guests want to go for the most part, which results in Steen being able to get a lot of great stories out of the people he interviews.

Hero’s interview is both funny and insightful. Right off the bat, Hero tells a hilarious story about CZW owner D.J. Hyde. Hero says that Hyde has a podcast that only Hyde and his grandmother listen to and Hyde said on the podcast that Hero knew he was going to get fired, so he reached out to him to get a booking at CZW’s “Cage of Death XV.” What actually happened was that Sami Callihan was the one who offered to reach out to Hyde for Hero. This is the story I heard from several people long before this interview was conducted and Hero’s side of how he got booked on “Cage of Death XV” is nearly word for word the story I heard. Hero hilariously says Hyde made something out of nothing by being an idiot. Steen then goes on to tell another great story about Hyde after Hero finishes his story.

Another lengthy segment of the interview, which is also quite funny, revolves around the names French wrestlers used on the independents in Quebec. Steen talks about how he used to pick up The Quebec Wrestling Almanac each year. This almanac featured results, stories, pictures, and the names of all of the wrestlers in Montreal. Steen and Hero trade stories about their favorite names, which had to have been a result of the language barrier, as there’s no other logical explanation for the ridiculous names these wrestlers chose for themselves. One wrestler went by the name The Little A—hole. Hero had a great line about a Tag Team Called the Faces of Death (Iceberg & Face of Death) when he said, “Iceberg was not properly represented in the team name.”

Steen and Hero continue to talk about Canadian independent talent for a long period of time and they begin talking about the time period in the mid-2000s when a lot of talent from the IWS promotion in Canada was used to in CZW. One of the wrestlers, The Green Phantom, is characterized as a bit of a nut case by Steen and Hero. They send up telling a great story about Phantom wrestling in a match in CZW and he kept messing up a springboard dive to the outside. Highspots owns the rights to the footage, so as Steen and Hero are telling the story, the footage of the spot comes on the screen and Phantom finally goes for the springboard to the outside without losing his balance and BLK Jeez just kicks him right in the back as he’s coming down to the floor and nobody catches him. This was in the upper echelon of the greatest wrestling clips I’ve seen in my lifetime.

Hero talks about his release from WWE and says things have been a bit overwhelming since he was let go by WWE. Hero, as he did in his Facebook post about his release from WWE, takes the high road and doesn’t bury anyone in WWE, but he does indicate that he saw it coming. “Things were kind of not awesome,” said Hero regarding how things were going for him around the time he was released late last year. Hero seems to have a really good frame of mind when it comes to how he’s dealing with his release from WWE and I applaud him for encouraging his fans to embrace his release with positivity instead of negativity. Hero talks about why he was released and discusses how management saw his presentation in terms of promos, in-ring work, and appearance and they didn’t see it in him to succeed.

Hero also talks about all of the benefits of the WWE Performance Center and it is interesting to listen to a first-hand account from someone that has been in developmental. Hero talks about all of the benefits of the performance center and the various names that have visited as guests to talk to the NXT wrestlers, but mentions he’s excited to get out of Florida and wrestle on the independent scene.

Hero talks about the talent that he’d like to wrestle on the independent scene. At first Hero says no names come to mind, but Steen prods him and Hero eventually mentions that he’d like to wrestle A.R. Fox, Ricochet, and Chuck Taylor amongst others. Hero recently wrestled Ricochet after this interview was filmed and they had a phenomenal match at “EVOLVE 25.” In this interview, Hero talked about how he hadn’t wrestled Ricochet since he weighed 135 pounds. It really is amazing to think of all of the fresh matches Hero has on the independents, even if they’re against wrestlers he’s faced before like Ricochet, as so many guys have improved a great deal over the last couple of years while Hero was in WWE.

Hero tells a lot of stories about CZW and IWA-MS during the shoot. All of them are fantastic stories that I haven’t heard before, but the one that stood out was told towards the end of the interview when Hero was answering fan questions. One fan asked him a question about his favorite Death Match moments. Hero tells a story about a match between Necro Butcher and Nate Webb in IWA-MS. Highspots owns the rights to CZW and IWA-MS footage, so when Hero and Steen are telling the stories, footage from the matches are shown on the screen.

I’m not a fan of Death matches, as the wrestlers tend to do a lot of things that aren’t smart, but I could not believe that lobsters were going to be used in the Necro-Webb match. The person that got the lobsters ended up storing them in fresh water, so they ended up dying before the match took place. This didn’t stop Webb and Necro from using them in the match and if the footage wasn’t shown, I wouldn’t believe the story, but sure enough Webb and Necro are shown hitting each other with dead lobsters.

Overall thoughts: (8.5) – Hero and Steen have good chemistry together and both men seemed comfortable trading stories. Hero gave a good amount of insight into his release from WWE and his time in the WWE Performance Center, so there’s a lot of value in watching this interview to get an idea of what it’s like to be in WWE developmental.

The open-ended format of the interview is also a highlight, as Steen and Hero traded a lot of funny stories throughout the interview, most of which revolved around the strange independent scene in Quebec and CZW. The stories that Steen and Hero tell about some of the wrestlers and matches they’ve encountered during their time in wrestling are unbelievable, but Highspots had the rights to the footage for a lot of the stories Hero and Steen discussed and the footage more than did justice to the ridiculous stories Steen and Hero were telling.

The CZW and IWA-MS stories are worth the price of admission alone, but there are so many other entertaining stories that Steen and Hero tell throughout the shoot that make this release worth the price of admission and more. Thumbs up!


You can purchase The Kevin Steen Show with Chris Hero by clicking HERE or by visiting Highspots.com.
Please click HERE and click “like” to join the Radican’s Wrestling Community Facebook fan page.

Follow Sean on Twitter at Twitter.com/SeanRadican

Contact Sean at PWTorchSean@gmail.com


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